MOZART wrote his symphony when in a condition of distress, but
who would know from the music of the composer's poverty and
gloom? The iteration of the chief theme of the second movement
soon frets the nerves, not from any poignancy of emotion, but
from its very placidity. And how seldom in Mozart's music is there
any emotional burst as we understand emotion today! There are
a few passages in the first movement of the G minor symphony,
pages in certain chamber works, and in the Requiem, and there
are the two great scenes in Don Giovanni, the trio between the
Don, the Commander, and Leporello after the duel, and the scene
between the blaspheming rake and the Stone Man. As a rule the
emotion of Mozart is that of the classic frieze or urn. Beauty with
him is calm and serene, and emotion, he believed, should always
be beautiful.

The symphony in E flat induced A. Apel to attempt a translation
of the music into poetry that should express the character of each
movement. It excited the fantastical E. T. A. Hoffmann to an extraordinary rhapsody: "Love and melancholy are breathed forth in purest
spirit tones; we feel ourselves drawn with inexpressible longing toward
the forms which beckon us to join them in their move with the spheres
in the eternal circles of the solemn dance." So explained Johannes
Kreisler in the Phantasiestücke in Callots Manier.

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